How to Negotiate Rent, From Someone Who’s Done It

It’s a good idea to know how to negotiate rent. I didn’t know rent was negotiable until I went through with the process myself. The problem with the articles out there don’t actually show you the conversations it took to negotiate the rental rate. Below are two examples of when I negotiated for two separate scenarios.

The two separate scenarios are negotiating a rental lease as a first time renter and as someone who’ve been renting a place already. I’ve been in both scenarios and been successful both times. What was the most important thing to remember is that there’s more than one way to negotiate.

Its not just the rental rate that you should or can negotiate for. There’s much more ways to negotiate than that. Below are some clever tricks and approaches you can to negotiate a rental lease.

How to Negotiate Rent as a New Tenant

Before going into how to negotiate rent as a new tenant, let’s SMASH that social share button and share to your favorite social media! It may just help that one friend you have who is in the market for rent and doesn’t know how to. This article has a real life person who actually went through with the process.

Don’t listen to many articles that give you advice on negotiating rent when they haven’t done it themselves. Listen to people who’ve actually gone through with the experience.

So with that said, let’s get into the specifics!

1) Understand Their Pricing Strategy

Some apartment rental’s strategy is to price a rental as a relatively high number first hand. Then once they get you in the door, they go down on price to make you feel like you got a good price. I saw a rental listing for $819 per month. Once I finished talking to the leasing agent, I got them down to $749 per month.

A savings of $60 per month! However, it turns out, my neighbor was paying $719 per month for literally the exact same thing. Understand their pricing strategy, they may just be playing a game in order to get you in the door. When I negotiated for another apartment, I got a $799 monthly lease down to a $749 per month lease.

However, my current apartment at the time presented a deal that I couldn’t refuse so I turned it down at the end. My current apartment was literally the cheapest and best apartment that I saw for the area. Therefore, I didn’t negotiate and I have no regrets about not negotiating. It’s important to realize when you are over-negotiating.

2) There Are More Things to Negotiate For Than Rental Rate

The rental rate is just one part of the equation. You can ask for many things like free access to the apartment gym, a one time rental concession of $200, the first prorated month to be waived, additional parking space, and much more. My favorite thing to ask for is the one time rental concession.

They are more prone to give it to you if it’s just one time. Asking for a “$25 / month rent reduction” is a big ask compared to a “one-time rent concession of $300”. Same cash difference, but different psychologically. If you want to learn how to negotiate rent, you have to realize the many negotiating strategies that are out there.

How do I know this trick? My second apartment out of college offered a “$100 rent concession” if I re-signed with the company. I happily took it. If I leave, it would have taken them much more than $100 to refill the vacancy. So then, the situation becomes a win-win situation. There are many things to negotiate when you negotiate rent.

Don’t neglect them as that’s what separates the good negotiators from average.

3) Give Something in Return

One thing that landlords HATE are tenants who pay late or worse, never pay at all. Then they have a liability on their side. Regardless if you pay the rent or not, the mortgage is due. Therefore, you can remove all of that risk by offering to prepay for the whole year in exchange for a 5% discount in rent.

Or you can ask to give up the parking spot because you don’t have a car in exchange for a $25/month rent reduction. Or you can offer up a 15 month lease instead of 12 months in exchange for a lower rent rate. Whatever it is, there are things of value that you can offer up to the landlord in exchange.

You can learn how to negotiate rent by offering something of value for the other side and see how they react. Some places won’t give you a lower rent rate in exchange for paying the rent in one lump sum. I know because I tried it before. However, it doesn’t hurt to ask, you literally lose nothing in return.

They are not going to suddenly not rent to you because you asked.

4) Research Their Competitors’ Prices

One easy way for you to negotiate rent is for you to bring up their competitors through Zillow. They HATE losing renters to competitors. So when you see a competitor who has a higher priced apartment but lower $/sq. ft. you bring that up to them. More than likely, they will concede because well, why wouldn’t you go somewhere else then?

How to negotiate rent? You bring up their competitors and demonstrate that you did the research. The people who get “insider prices” are the ones who are in the know. The ones who aren’t in the know get “tourist prices”. They know they can rip you off and you wouldn’t even know it anyway. So why wouldn’t they?

When you demonstrate that you did your research and know exactly when they are ripping you off, then they get scared. Then they concede on things that they wouldn’t have conceded to somebody else! Knowing what their competitors offer and making them jealous is one way to negotiate rent.

How to Negotiate Rent Renewal

So now that you know how to negotiate rent for a first time renter, now let’s answer the question, “what if you’ve been living and renting there for a year or more?”.

1) Know Your Negotiating Position

The very first thing you have to do is know your negotiating position. Are you actually overpaying for rent or are you underpaying? I know my negotiating position. I won 10 times over. My apartment’s rent is lower than anyone else’s living in the same complex. Therefore, I don’t press my luck when it comes time to renewing my lease.

It’s one thing to know when you should negotiate, it’s another to know when you should not negotiate. When I was living at my earlier apartment, I knew that I was overpaying because my neighbor confirmed it. She was paying $719 per month while I was paying $749 per month. So I knew there was negotiating room.

When I asked them to go down, they wouldn’t budge. When I told them that I was leaving, then magically and all of a sudden, they could offer a $699 per month lease WITH a $100 one time concession. It’s very important to know where you stand in the negotiating position. Over-negotiating is just as bad as under-negotiating.

When you want to know how to negotiate rent, you want to create a win-win situation, not win-lose.

2) Negotiate Rent by Being a Good Tenant Throughout the Year

This is very simple to do. All you have to do is pay on time and treat the place as if it were your own. Clean the place and take good care of it. Don’t smash the windows because you think it’ll be fun. Then when it comes down to lease renewal, your landlord is more than likely to make concessions.

When I re-signed in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I asked my landlord for a one time $125 concession. Even though I knew it was pushing it because I already live in the best place in my city for the lowest possible price. To my surprise, he said yes. I don’t think he knew I had nowhere else to go, anyway.

When you’re a good tenant throughout the year, your landlord will be more than open to negotiate lower rent. The last thing your landlord wants is to have a vacant property that doesn’t make money. If you’re a good tenant with minimal maintenance issues, the landlord knows how profitable you are.

As a result, they want to keep you. It’s not in their best interest to risk a vacant property for a couple of months to save a couple hundred dollars.

3) Be Forthcoming – Don’t Play Games

There’s nothing more annoying to the other side than to know that you’re playing games. Good negotiators who know how to negotiate rent don’t beat around the bush and rather get straight to the point. When I negotiated for that one time $125 concession, I didn’t mess around or play games.

I tee’d up the conversation by point blank emailing my landlord, “hey, my lease is coming up, but I want to talk to you about the price and the lease, can you talk?”. Then when I talked with my landlord and asked for what I wanted, the call lasted 5 minutes. 3 days later, he gave me what I wanted and asked for.

It was a straightforward conversation that didn’t require any games. Not only will you create goodwill and have good graces with the counter party, it saves you time as well. Negotiate rent by being direct, forthcoming, and straightforward. The other party don’t like it when they figure out they’ve been had.

4) Offer a Different Lease Structure

My lease structure is so that maintenance expenses all fall onto me. I change out the AC filter and do any small maintenance work around the house. Now, the big maintenance stuff, my landlord takes care of. They put up the fence when it was broken and they fixed my house when my AC unit had clogged up water.

Most apartment leases are structured as the landlords pay for everything. Mine isn’t. It’s one of the reasons why my rent is the cheapest in the area. But I’m OK with that. I learned how to unclog sinks by myself and learned how to clean a stained stove by myself. When I get an actual house, I’ll know what to do.

Most people forget this part when they’re trying to figure out how to negotiate rent. They don’t understand that they can offer a different lease structure to the one they’re used to to get a cheaper lease rate. Saving $300 – $600 per year to only spend $100 per year on maintaining the house is a win-win.

Can You Negotiate Lower Rent?

Now that you know how to negotiate rent, now it’s time to know, can you actually do this? The answer is a resounding yes. There are so many people who take rental prices “as-is” and think that there’s no room for negotiation. Here’s something you learn as you go through life.

EVERYTHING is negotiable. An apartment lease is one of the most standard things that you can negotiate for. In life, we negotiate for more things than we realize. Simple things such as asking for the time is negotiating. You’re asking the person for something that you don’t have yet. There will be little pushback.

Next time that you’re in the market for a rental apartment, evaluate your negotiating position. Then when you realize that there’s room to negotiate, NEGOTIATE!! It’s a shame how many people actually take the price as-is without thinking there’s a way to get it for lower.

People are always trying to make deals. There are times when people’s livelihoods literally depend on making a deal with someone else. When you get a job offer, you negotiate it, unless the job is obscenely higher than what you expected. Something like triple your salary. However, those situations are extremely rare.

For the vast majority of cases, you’re supposed to negotiate and you should negotiate. Especially when it comes to rental renewals as well. The first thing to know how to negotiate rent is to know that you can negotiate and ask for things that are of value to you. It just takes time to practice.

At the end, even if you just save $100, little wins are powerful.

Now that You Know How to Negotiate Rent, Do It!

The thing about negotiating rent is that it doesn’t happen often. I negotiated rent four times in my entire life. I suspect that I will add one more time to that but the important thing is that I’m not negotiating 24/7. It’s good to know the tools beforehand. It’s good to know how to negotiate rent before you actually do it.

Why is that? Because you’re not going to be doing it often. Therefore, it’s important to get it right at least once out of the times that you are going to negotiate rent. There’s only a certain amount of times you have the opportunity to negotiate. When you feel like you are more than capable, then you know you’re getting a good price.

There’s people I know who didn’t negotiate rent and I know that they overpaid for their apartment. However, they don’t know that they’re overpaying. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Instead of being ignorant, actually understand where you stand in the power dynamic that’s present within any two people.

My friends who didn’t negotiate don’t care that they are overpaying, and that’s good for them. However, if you do care and want to get the best deal at a great price that works for the both of you, then go for it! You may make the other side mad a couple of times (I know I made the other side mad often), but that’s OK.

You now have the tools you need to know how to negotiate rent. Knowledge is meaningless without application. Now all you have to do is put the theory into practice and be amazed at what you can accomplish. The opportunities and possibilities are endless, what’re you waiting for? Ask for that rent reduction!